Tag Archives: progression

Making a Good Chord Progression

Posted on March 8, 2016 by songtive

How is ‘good’ defined when it comes to music? Have you ever wondered what makes a chord progression ‘good’? All of them are excellent questions that we are trying to answer on today’s topic!

Music History 101:

Back in the day, in the 1200s or so – really way back – music was considered an exclusive form of art, and as such, not suitable for everyone to perform and don’t even think about learning it! This was because the Catholic Church was the prevailing power in that time, and considered that such a beautiful gift like the music should be used for the sole purpose of praising God, leaving any other purpose in the heretic area, and as a prevailing power, the Church limited the musical teachings to clerical orders only.

However, those clerical orders observed some acoustic phenomena that were the Beauty Canon back then. Certain intervals were considered ‘good’ due to their acoustic properties: the perfect fifth, the octave and the perfect fourth, because of their overtones, (i.e. sounds so high in pitch that we are unable to hear clearly) produced a distinguishable stable sensation – this stability sensation is what we call consonance, a key concept for a ‘good sounding’ music.

Later on, in a period we know as Renaissance, as the Church became more open and tried to get closer to their congregation (i.e. all the people), some clerics started to pass on the musical knowledge to the nobility and their families. This brought an enhancement in what would be considered consonance, adding up the major third, the minor third, the major sixth and the minor sixth intervals.

In the 1600s we already have the basis of our modern tonal system, consisting in the following intervals: major 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th; minor 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th; perfect 4th, 5th and 8th. Some musical theorists had the idea of combining sounds by overlaying consecutive 3rds of a major or minor scale: C – E – G for C major scale, C – Eb – G for C minor scale. And that’s how the chord theory (i.e. harmony) was born!

The ‘Good’ in music

All this chord system was entirely based on the combination of consonances starting from the note that gives name to a chord (i.e. the tonic); let me give you an example:

  • C major chord is formed by C – E – G. The tonic of the chord would be C, since the chord is called ‘C’ major
  • From C to E there’s a major third: a consonance
  • From C to G there’s a perfect fifth: another consonance
  • Consonance + Consonance = Consonance

This consonance combination is what defines what sounds ‘Good’ in any musical context, and all their theoretical aspects are condensed in what we call Harmony.

What makes a Good Chord Progression?

When you take any major scale in any key, and you analyze it note by note, you get a series of tonal degrees, which we number using roman numbers:

C    D     E     F    G     A       B    C 
I -  II – III – IV –  V –   VI –   VII - I

Now we overlay third by third in each degree to get the chords for every degree, you must look at each degree vertically:

G       A       B        C      D     E           F            G
E       F       G        A      B     C           D            E
C       D       E        F      G     A           B            C 
I       IIm    IIIm      IV     V    VIm        VIIdim         I

Chords for I, IV and V are considered major chords since there’s no letter in them.

Since the IV degree is placed a half step away from the III degree, and the same occurs from VII to I, we are going to call IV (F note) and VII (B note) our leading tones for C major scale. If you want to find the leading tones for any other key just look at their IV and VII degrees. For example, in G major scale would be C (IV) and F# (VII).

Here comes the nice part: every time you put a chord after another you create a chord progression, but anytime you put a chord after another chord that shares one or more notes with the first one you create a Good Chord Progression! Let’s see some examples:

  • Moving from I to III there are two common notes: G and E
  • Moving from V to I there is one common note: G
  • Moving from II to V there is one common note: D
  • Moving from VI to IV there are two common notes: A and C

This way you can make a good chord progression following this simple tip:

And if you repeat it over and over, you will find it very pleasing to the ear!

Of course, you can combine chords with no common notes between them to achieve a musical effect called contrast:

Explore multiple combinations with Songtive so you can find many chord progressions that fit your songs!

How can I use it?

chordsmusic-theoryprogressionsongtive

The Pachelbel Progression

Posted on February 29, 2016 by songtive

This time we’re going to learn about one of the most popular chord progressions ever. How popular? Well, enough to be part of these musical hits:

  • Cryin’ – Aerosmith
  • Graduation – Vitamin C
  • Basket Case – Green Day
  • Hotel California – The Eagles (a minor mode version of it)
  • Valley of the Damned – Dragonforce
  • Changes – David Bowie
  • Go West – The Village people (yep, even them)

As you can see, a wide variety of styles include this simple-yet-effective chord progression: from rock and roll, to punk rock, disco music, heavy metal, power metal, glam rock… the list is huge!

The Progression

In the 1600s, there was this popular musician called Johann Pachelbel, who made it into the musical hall of fame due to his widely known work “Canon in D”. A canon was a musical form that consisted in starting a melody and then adding up successive melodic lines based on the same harmony that the first melody created, developing a complete and quite beautiful musical effect by overlapping each line using the chord progression (i.e. underlying harmony) as an unifying element. You can listen to it by yourself:

The cello starts the melody, and the underlying harmony that comes within gives the point of entry for the first violin and the other instruments. The notes are:

||: D – A – B – F# – G – D – G – A :||

If you take the notes and understand them as the root of their own chords in the D major key, you get the following chords:

And, if we rewrite it as a chord progression chart, we get the following:

||: I – V – VI – III – IV – I – IV – V:||

This way, you can transpose it to ANY OTHER MAJOR KEY without giving yourself the trouble of figuring out the chord types, since a chord progression chart works for every key Let’s see an example in the key of A major:

Why does it work so well?

The answer lies, as Brahms said, in the bass: the motion of these roots generates a Descending 4th’s Progression (1 – V; VI – III; IV – I) which sounds good because of the logic pattern it suggests to our ears. Just check it out by listening to the cello part again at the beginning of the ‘Canon in D’!
Even when the pattern is interrupted when moving from IV to V at the end of the progression, it sounds good due to the authentic cadence pattern it creates when you repeat the progression: IV – V – I (being I the beginning of the progression all over again). This chord progression just had all the elements that make it harmonically effective!

How can I use it?

  • You can check our the most popular app Piano Companion which helps you to better understand chords and scales.
  • Enter the Songtive.com and start a new song (or for better sound quality use our iPhone/iPad/Android app)
  • At the Song preferences tab select a key – I’m using D major for discussion purpose – select a time signature and sidescroll the metronome for setting the beat
  • In the line below just input the Pachelbel Progression and press the ‘+’ button at the right
  • That’s it! You just created a Pachelbel Progression to compose or improvise over!
  • Try to land on the chord tones as they come. This is called “playing the changes” in a jazz context, and it’s a very useful resource to make wonderful melodies
chordsprogressionsongtive